The era of the Three Kingdoms and Warring States collide!

Warriors Orochi is an amazing game with a blend of elements from both huge titles by Koei! Dynasty Warriors 5 and Samurai Warriors 2! It is a perfect game for old time fans looking for the best of both worlds from the Warriors line, and for new gamers to enter the fast paced hack n slash series that has sprouted no more then 16 sequels!
People who haven't played Samurai Warriors 2 will notice there is a new lvl up system implemented for the first time in a Dynasty series and its for the best! While the lvl cap in SW2 is only 50, in Orochi it is 100! With exp gain from killing peons and grunts, base captains, officers and generals! With the ability to reset characters at anytime with an officer rest button means no waiting for a Xtreme Legends pack to reset your fav charas coz you have already maxed them out .

There's been a few tweaks to the move list with the introduction of a special attack that for some Characters drains the musou bar to unleash devastating attacks to break thru the countless enemies on screen! Characters tho like Xiahou Dun and Zhou Tai don't use the musou bar with their special attack which makes them pretty much over powered ( 2 of my fave charas too!) Dun's Charge 1 slice then followed by a double special attack (R1 for ps2!) , the second being a wirl wind attack that sends peons and officers alike flying, obliterates anything in it path clearing room to escape if need be! Because one thing about Orochi is its a lot tougher then past Koei games! More enemies on screen and officers seem to chain attacks against you while you are knocked about in the air!

There is 4 different story lines to play (Shu, Wei, Wu and Samurai) with a total of 77 characters to unlock (based on historical characters from Ancient China and Feudal Japan) ranging from DW5 and SW2, with 2 new characters to play as! The Serpent King Orochi who is pretty damn bad ass with his massive sickle glaive and quick as all hell move list! And Da Ji Orochi's lapdog!

New weapon fusion system makes it fun to customize your weapons gained in battles! Another nice touch to the series you can have up to a dozen weapons for each character meaning lots of different variations to have with weapons! Just go to weapon fusion, pick two weapons to fuse together and upgrade weapons as you see fit, growth points are used to upgrade weapons which are gained from points scored at the end of each lvl! Growth points can also be used to buff up any character in lvl if you want to make them lvl faster instead of grinding or to make a new character you have recently gained catch up to others you have (all depending on the amount of Growth Points you have banked)!

Possible the best change to the Warriors series to date has been the 3 man team! No longer do you play as just one officer. Each lvl you take control of 3 officers! 2 in waiting regenerating life and musou as you rock with the current general! No body guards needed in WO coz if you start to lose a lil life on your current officer at the press of button your team mate joins the fray with full mosou and life if rested long enough ( doesn't take long for the bars to regen!) meaning you can chain up to 3 musou attacks against your foes! This new system gives a lil life and a great change to a series that just keeps going! Getting stronger and stronger! The Warriors line is virtually an EA hack n slash sports game that gets updated every one to two years!
The only lil fault in Warriors Orochi, is the reuse of character and lvl designs from DW5 and SW2! This game could have been damn right amazing if Koei had spent a lil extra time with this giving it new character design and lvl design! Would have made it the ultimate Warriors game! Characters have a wardrobe which only rearranges colour on the uniform and/or skin and hair to give them a slight change but no new armour sets! It isn't anything to deter the game but it could have made the experience so much grander with big changes to character and lvl desgn!

All an all a amazing game for the old fans of this long last line of hack n slash! And a great chance for new players to enter the world of both the Three Kingdoms China and Warring States Japan! I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a great game!


Source / Author / Credit: Anonymous